


In Limbo

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: F/M, Lung Transplant, post-S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan's in the waiting room as Emma gets her transplant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Limbo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shanynde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shanynde/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: I hope you like this! :D

Dylan had learned a few things in the past three hours. The first was that if you tried to read the same magazine too many times with sweaty fingers, the magazine would begin to melt in your fingers. He must owe the hospital a new copy of Cosmopolitan.

The second thing Dylan had learned was that while a person confronted with the audio of their daughter having sex with someone should really just hang up the phone, the preferred response on a soap opera is to angrily bash the phone into other objects and wring one’s hands while yelling both the daughter and boyfriend’s names, but ultimately still listening.

The last was that any distraction, whether a magazine or a soap opera, only served to heighten the anxiety he felt as he thought of Emma in the hospital room, having her lung replaced. What if something went wrong? What if it went the way of one of those medical shows? What would they do then – pull the shade? But he already wasn’t in there, so they wouldn’t do that. 

They’d just come out and sit him down and…

He couldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t think about that. 

He started to wish he had taken up Norma’s offer to have her here with him, just to give him someone to talk to. But she had Norman to take care of and anyway, she would have just made the matter worse by freaking out about it. As much as Dylan loved his mother, she didn’t exactly count as a calming presence.

And she still didn’t know what Dylan had done to get this operation for Emma in the first place.

He kicked his feet and wished that Caleb was here. That man understood him, knew all about this situation, but couldn’t set foot in a hospital and wasn’t even in town anymore.

It was all a mess. He was alone.

He had no idea how long it would even be. He’d tried to talk with Emma’s father a bit, but it had been awkward and painful and eventually, when the man had gone down to the hospital café to grab some coffee, Dylan had stayed behind. What did they really have to talk about? 

Plus, someone had to be here if there was news. Mr. Decody should get a few moments out of the line of fire – he’d lived there for eighteen years, after all. Dylan didn’t know how he managed it. He was imploding.   
He rocked forward, locked his arms under his legs and let out a long sigh. He couldn’t start crying here – not while he had the strange sense that Emma could see and hear everything he was doing. He wondered if that was how it worked when they put you under, whether it was all weird fever dreams or whether you could actually drift out of your body and go around spying on everyone. He would have to ask her when… when he saw her again.

Back when Dylan had been a kid, he’d stayed home from school one time, and he had lain on the couch and had watched TV. He had felt two weak to change the channel, and Norma had left the channel tuner set to Lifetime. The movie that had come on had been about a young girl, maybe in her early teens, who had some sort of horrible accident or violence befall her and had ended up in some sort of purgatory; the man who, as Dylan recalled, seemed to run things in purgatory had asked her whether she wanted to go “back out there”, had told her that it would be easier to move on than to return to her old life.  
Maybe that was what was going on in Emma’s head right now, and maybe he had to hope that the thought of seeing him again was what would bring her back to him.

But how could he think that? He was a mess, a walking disaster, someone who should never have been born and had a distinct tendency to screw up everything in his wake. 

A little voice spoke to him, reminding him that at least, as of recent, he was trying.

That had to count for something, didn’t it? But did it count for enough to save Emma?

***

“Immediate family only,” the nurse was saying, but Will Decody must have told her something, and suddenly Dylan was going down a hall and suiting up in something that felt like he was going to be fighting huge radioactive bugs. It’s odd to think they need to put this barrier between him, but in a way he feels safer with this – that he can’t accidentally hurt her, that she can’t get ensnared by the things that follow him each and every day, that have followed him since the day he was born; no, even before.

But she knew, she knew about some of those things. She knew and wanted to be around him, anyway.

He wouldn’t let her know about the transplant, though. That was one secret he would keep close to him, tucked away inside his head. The only other person who could tell it didn’t seem to ever be coming back, so no danger there. (The “goodbye” still rang in his head. At least he wouldn’t lose anyone else, not today.)

Emma was lying on a hospital bed, tubes every which way, but her eyes were ever-so-slightly open, and that made Dylan smile. Her hair was drawn back into a ponytail, and Dylan wondered if there was some medical reason for that, or just something she had done. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her with her hair back.

It was something to focus on. Something to talk about, maybe, if he ran out of things, so that he wouldn’t open up and spill out all the worries he had had in the waiting room.

“Hey,” he said quietly, and gave a wave. 

She lifted one hand in greeting, and Dylan let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. 

Maybe he only said it to the inside of the suit, or maybe it just fell off somewhere in space, or maybe Emma didn’t even hear it before she fell back asleep again, but the next thing he whispered was, “I love you.”

And he hoped that counted for quite a lot.


End file.
